


During 02x13 (the Future Job)

by PseudoLeigha



Series: (More) 2AM Conversations [27]
Category: Leverage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-17
Updated: 2016-04-17
Packaged: 2018-06-02 18:33:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,547
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6577819
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PseudoLeigha/pseuds/PseudoLeigha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nate and Parker talk about losing loved ones. Serious!Parker, mourning!Nate, lots of angst for everyone.</p><p>Trigger warning: moderately explicit depiction of canon character deaths (Parker's brother; Sam Ford)</p>
            </blockquote>





	During 02x13 (the Future Job)

Parker did not go back to her warehouse the night after Rand pulled his evil cold-reading trick on her. When, at the end of the day, she had asked what they needed to do next, and Tara had said apologetically that all they had left to do was wait, she had paced around anxiously, angrily, until Eliot made her sit down to eat some pasta thing. After that, she hid in a cupboard in Nate’s kitchen – one of the ones Eliot didn’t use – until she finally had to get up and use the bathroom.

If she couldn’t kill that _fucker_ Rand (and Nate and Tara and Sophie when Parker called her all said no, even though Hardison seemed okay with it in principle and Eliot had volunteered to help), and there was nothing left for her to do but wait to _break_ him and crush him into a little tiny smear like the _insect_ he was, then there was nothing to stop her from thinking about Danny. Thinking about Danny made her want to curl up into a little ball so tight that she might turn into a diamond, or else jump off the tallest building she could find _without_ her harness, because no matter what that lying piece of shit said, it _was_ her fault – Brooke’s fault – that Danny was dead. Parker _was_ Brooke back then, and no matter what else changed, that didn’t.

Brooke taught Danny how to ride a bike, yes, but she hadn’t _quite_ managed to teach him how to do a stop-turn. That’s what they were doing when Danny died. She was six, and far more coordinated. He was five, and thought his big sister knew everything. He followed her out into the street when she decided they needed more room to practice. She was the one who should have seen the car coming.

She didn’t hear him fall, too wrapped up in the feel of her weight shifting on the tires as she pulled the brake and leaned forward, swinging the back wheel around behind her. She finished her second turn, safe in the driveway, just in time to see him die, lying in the road like an _animal_ , his right arm, broken, reaching out to her to save him. She was grinning in exhilaration as the light left his eyes, so pleased with her new trick, the scene before her not yet registering.

When it did, she screamed.

She knew she screamed, because that’s why the Fitzhowes came running, but everything after that, everything until she felt the flames of the Mitchells’ house burning at her back was (still is) a long, shock-smeared blur of senseless sights and sounds and smells.

It was the need to use the restroom that drew her out, saved her from reliving the memory again and again and again. Sometimes she didn’t think of Danny for years at a time, but when she did, it was always like this – she couldn’t stop seeing his dead eyes, hearing his laugh, the feel of his hand in hers as she dragged him out to play with her, sun shining on his hair as it fluttered in the breeze, and tire-tracks in blood, where the car hadn’t even slowed down.

She nearly scared Nate half to death, cracking stiff joints and wiping dried tears from her face as she walked out of his kitchen.

“Jesus _Christ_ , Parker!”

She quirked her head to the side. She didn’t feel like talking.

“Where have you – have you been here this whole time?”

She shrugged and continued toward the bathroom. It was night, now. Late, too. She wouldn’t be this stiff if she hadn’t been curled into a ball in the cupboard for at least four or five hours.

Nate was still there when she came back to the living room/briefing area, concern written across his face even more clearly than it had been earlier, when everyone had come back from the show and found her lying on the floor.

“Parker, come sit here,” he waved at the sofa. “Talk to me.”

“I don’t wanna talk,” she whispered, though she did sit down.

“You can just listen, then.”

She nodded briefly. Anything to take her mind off Danny. The couch was too soft. She moved to the floor. She couldn’t really see Nate from there, but that was okay. She didn't really like looking at people when they talked to her, anyway. Nate poured another drink, and set it down next to her. She didn’t normally drink, but on a day like this, she savored the pain as the alcohol burned down her throat. She took a sip and let Nate’s words wash over her.

“I know what it’s like to lose the most important person in your life,” he said quietly. “I know that you hate yourself for it, that you blame yourself for not being able to stop it...”

He was quiet for a minute before he continued. “When Sam… I did everything I could, and it still wasn’t enough. He had leukemia, but the cancer wasn’t what killed him – it was the treatment. A bone marrow transplant. Fifty fifty success rate. There was a new procedure, a safer way they could have tried to do it, but IYS – they called it experimental – refused to let us try it.”

His voice grew thick, and she knew that if she looked up, he would be crying. She didn’t. “I was there. I watched him die, on an operating table. I watched them try to shock him back to life, watched him fight and fail. I tried to get to him, to hold him in that last second, and I was too late. I was _too late_. I watched my baby boy die surrounded by doctors and sterile beeping fucking _machines_ , and all I can think is, he must have been so afraid – felt so alone, at the end, and I – I couldn’t even do that for him, be there, at the end.”

He was sobbing, now, and Parker didn’t know what to say, so she said nothing while Nate took several interminable minutes to pull himself back together.

Eventually he spoke again. “Sometimes everything you can do just _isn’t enough_ , Parker. That doesn’t mean it’s your fault. Your brother dying, it wasn’t your fault. And… and it wasn’t my fault that Sam died.” He took a deep, shuddering breath. “You weren’t driving the car that hit your brother. Do you hear me, Parker? We both did everything we could, and we couldn’t save them, but it’s not our fault.” She nodded slowly, because she didn’t want to argue about it, even though she knew he was wrong, at least about her. He didn’t give his son cancer, but it was still her fault she and Danny had been playing in the street.

She could feel Nate’s silent tears shaking the couch again as she leaned against it.

“How – how do you do it, Parker? Live, knowing that it’s not your fault, but believing it is anyway?” he finally asked, a good five minutes later.

She looked at him for the first time in what seemed like hours, startled. He knew she didn’t believe him? Then she snorted silently at herself. Of course he did. Nate knew _everything._ Except, apparently, this. She shrugged. “A… friend? I guess you’d call her a friend. Maybe. Um. Before the making her cry thing, and the Conduct Disorder thing. The psychologist they made me talk to after Foster Family Eight, anyway. She said that you never really get over losing someone you love. I guess that’s how you know you really loved them? But you have to keep going on with your life anyway. So I usually don’t think about it.”

“But how?”

“You just… don’t? Think about other things? Isn’t that why you’re all obsessive about our jobs?”

Nate nodded slowly. “It’s not enough, though. I – It’s never going to be enough to make up for Sam.”

Parker was stymied, briefly. “I don’t think that’s the point. I could be wrong. I’m not good at people-things. But I’m pretty sure jobs and losing people don’t balance out like numbers. I think you have to just get used to it hurting, because it’s been twenty years since Danny died, and it still hurts when I have to think about it, which is why you should have just let me an’ Eliot kill Rand. He deserves it for bringing it up. And the client would be happy, too,” she pointed out.

“You can’t just kill people, Parker,” Nate said.

She was pretty sure he was wrong about that, but, she decided, yawning deeply, that she didn’t really care enough to argue about it. Being emotional all day was exhausting, and now that she was sufficiently distracted, again, it was beginning to catch up with her. “Don’t see why not,” she mumbled, curling up in a chair.

“ _Because_ , Parker,” he started, then apparently realized she was falling asleep on him. “Parker?”

“Talk more later,” she muttered, or at least tried to. It might not have come out right, because Nate said, “Parker?” again.

The last thing she remembered was a warm blanket being draped over her, and a whisky-smelling kiss pressed to the top of her head.


End file.
